Roughly 1,500 people are working at any given time this week to finish setting up for the annual auto show, which opens to more than 5,000 journalists on Monday.

As of Thursday morning, none of the displays were exactly “show quality,” but officials, as they do every year, promised to have everything ready for the 550 or so vehicles, including more than 50 new debuts, at the 2014 Detroit auto show.

Cobo Center itself also is toward the end of a $279 million renovation, including a new conference rooms, glass atrium and food court that will be open this year for auto show guests.

Duggan said the NAIAS and the more than 50-year-old convention center have “never looked better.”

Mayor Mike Duggan glances into a Ram truck on display at the 2014 North American International Auto Show at the Cobo Center in Detroit, Thursday, Jan. 9. The mayor previewed the show with NAIAS officials and said the show is amazing and looks to be a great year. Katie Bailey | MLive Detroit

“I was here about five years ago when the mood was very different,” he told reporters on the show floor. “You can just feel the excitement and the optimism of the auto industry going the direction that it’s going.

“It’s going to be a big year.”

With about 796,000 people attending the show in 2013 – the highest attendance in nearly a decade – officials anticipate this year’s to be the largest since the early-2000s.

An emerging trend for this year’s show appears to be high-performance sport and muscle cars. About 15-20 of the debuts this year are expected to be sport or high-performance vehicles.

Kelley Blue Book senior analyst Karl Brauer said the amount of “fun” vehicle debuts, including a dozen or so concept cars and trucks, is a sign of the strength of the U.S. auto industry, which sold 15.6 million vehicles in 2013 -- marking the highest sales volume since 16.1 million vehicles in 2007.

“The theme is ‘we’re alive again,’ ” said Brauer, adding automakers are having a lot of fun with “frivolous, niche specialized products.”

Tickets to the 2014 public show days are $7 for senior citizens and children between 7-12 years old; $13 for adults; and free for children 6 and under. Tickets for the black-tie Charity Preview featuring musician Sheryl Crow are $350. For more information on tickets, visit naias.com.